Sarah Palin, in another attempt to break the bullshit land speed record, unleashed a particularly unhinged-sounding anti-Barack Obama rant on Sean Hannity's show yesterday. The former Alaska governor claimed, among other things, that the President was unvetted when he ran for office, that he's a radical, and that he wants to bring America back to a time before the Civil War. You know, when it was legal in many places to own black people and force them to work as slaves.

Palin's appearance on Hannity's show came on the heels of a limp non-scandal that the ghost of Andrew Breitbart is attempting to fluff into relevance. Apparently back in 1990, when MC Hammer, Paula Abdul, and Vanilla Ice ruled the music charts and stirrups ruled our pants, then-law student Barack Obama introduced controversial law professor Derek Bell at a rally and then hugged him. And now the Breitbart camp is hawking a video of a lecture by another professor and ally of Obama's, Charles J. Ogletree, Jr. that's been edited to make it seem like there's some kind of smart black people conspiracy at work in covering up evidence that the President and Bell were best friends, and because Bell had some kind of out-there ideas, Barack Obama must also espouse those ideas, since if anyone is friends with anyone, they must agree on all things. Ergo: socialism.

The whole affair is such a reach that most trainers don't recommend you attempt the mental gymnastics required to wrap your mind around it until you've warmed up and stretched for at least 20 minutes, lest you pull something.

But Sean Hannity has taken off and ran with it, and for some reason he's looking to noted non-historian Sarah Palin for outsider insight on how all of this went down and why it matters. Maybe it was the new rimmed glasses, but the self-proclaimed Undefeated (but to be fair: also Winless) former Vice Presidential nominee seemed to sputter with extra intensity during yesterday's appearance, scolding the President for his 22-years-ago hug with Bell in an epic run on sentence that eventually devolved into Palin accusing the President of being in favor of regressing back to a time of slavery.

Well, what we can gleam from this is an understanding of why we are all on the road that we are on and it's based on what went into his thinking, being surrounded by radicals. He is bringing us back Sean to days that... you can harken back to days before the Civil War, when unfortunately too many Americans mistakenly believed that not all men were created equal. And it was the Civil War that began the codification of the truth here in America... yes, we are equal and we all have equal opportunities, not based on the color of your skin.

You have equal opportunities to work hard and to succeed and to embrace the opportunities, god given opportunities to develop resources and work extremely hard and as I say, to succeed.

Now, it has taken all these years for many Americans to understand that that gravity, that mistake, took place before the Civil War and why the Civil War had to really start changing America. What Barack Obama seems to want to do is go back to before those days when we were in different classes based on income, based on color of skin.

I'm no scholar on the inner workings of the President's brain, but I'd infer that President Obama probably would prefer to move

forward

to a time when right wing pundits who attempt to use his association with other black intellectuals as damning evidence that he's a radical outsider socialist Kenyan Marxist warlord don't find traction with a depressing number of Americans rather than back to a time when it was totally fine for people like Sarah Palin's ancestors to own black people. But that's just a guess.

But Sarah Palin's nothing if not tenacious and completely undaunted by facts. And as an American citizen who enjoys eating popcorn while watching hilarious trainwrecks, I'm hoping and praying that she runs for President on a "saying whatever she wants" platform. Reach for the stars, Sarah.